


Leave It All Behind

by xSeshatx



Series: Peter Parker: Future Hearts [18]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Good Peter, Irondad, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSeshatx/pseuds/xSeshatx
Summary: After Peter's kidnapping and eventual return to Tony, he's ready to go back to school, and he's kind of okay? Maybe? He thinks he is. He's getting better, at least.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Flash Thompson, Peter Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Peter Parker: Future Hearts [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/993498
Comments: 11
Kudos: 175





	Leave It All Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Leave It All Behind - Sleeping With Sirens

Peter didn’t return to school for another week. He was taken on a Tuesday, found that Saturday, and had the next two weeks completely off from school. The weekend before he went back to school, MJ and Ned both came over the Tower with all the work he had missed and copies of their notes. Ned was the first one to come to the Tower, and his parents had asked to see him. As in, Ned’s parents had asked to see Peter. Peter liked Ned’s family, and they seemed to like him, so they wanted to give him a hug and tell him that they were glad he was okay. MJ came an hour or so later. During that time, Peter and Ned were playing video games, the first time that Peter picked up a controller in a very long time.

Friday night was spent doing homework exclusively. They weren’t in a super smart school just because they wanted to be there. They put in effort and work, so the entire night was dedicated to homework. Ned and MJ tutored Peter on what he had missed and started doing their homework for the weekend while Peter was doing some of the old work he had missed. There were lots of assignments, a handful of essays, and lots and lots of notes to copy. His teachers sent a note with his work, telling him that he was not required to have it all finished by Monday, but he wasn’t going to fall anymore behind. They gave him until the following Friday, an additional two weeks to get it all done. He was going to have it all finished by the time he went into school. He was a nerd.

It was four in the morning when Peter finally succumbed to sleep. Ned had call it quits at two, so MJ and Peter relocated to the living room so they wouldn’t disturb him, and MJ had dozed off around 3:30. Peter stayed up a little while longer, typing out one of his essays and listening to music with his headphones in because MJ preferred sleeping in complete silence. Without her talking to him off and on, the sleepiness settled in. He fell asleep with his laptop on his lap still and his head resting back against the couch from his position on the floor. MJ was curled up on the couch directly behind him, her head using the arm as a pillow.

Clint had been the one who found them in that same position a few hours later. He knelt beside Peter and shook him awake. “Hey, kiddo. How about you put your computer away and go get comfortable in bed?”

“What time is it?” he asked through a yawn and stretch. His neck hurt. That was unfortunate. “What’re you doing here?”

“Seven. I woke up not too long ago and Friday told me to come get you,” he explained. “How long you been out here?”

“We were doing homework,” he said.

“Finish it all?”

“No, but I’m getting close,” he said. He had been doing homework for close to ten hours by the time he fell asleep, and he really got a lot done.

“You can continue again later this afternoon. Go get comfortable.”

Going back to sleep sounded ideal, so he nodded to Clint, who closed his laptop and set it on the table. Peter climbed onto the other end of the couch away from MJ and took Clint’s advice by getting comfortable. He was tired.

Ned and MJ stayed for dinner on Saturday, the two-week anniversary of him being found after being kidnapped by Joseph Rich. Nobody mentioned it, thankfully. The whole day was full of anything but schoolwork. There were lots of movies being played in the background while they played card games and board games. There were some video games. There were a lot of snacks. It was a good day.

Clint came back to visit Saturday evening after Ned and MJ had left. “I know you’re probably gonna want to become a recluse and hide in your room now that you have alone time, but do you want to come to the gym with me for a little bit?”

It wasn’t often that Clint asked anybody to join him in the gym. He wasn’t the biggest presence in the gym. Peter also hadn’t been in the gym in a while. He couldn’t remember the last time he actually stepped foot into the gym. It had been a couple months for sure. Still, Clint wasn’t the biggest person on sparring or punching the punching bags, so Peter wasn’t expecting anything too terrible or draining or physical.

“I didn’t tell Tony we’re doing anything,” Clint warned. “He probably isn’t gonna be so happy with me. I expect you to have my back.” The last part was said mostly as a joke, but that didn’t take away the worry that Clint just influenced. “You know Tony; the most overprotective person on the planet, right? He’s gonna worry I’m pushing you too hard too soon. You have a mouth. If you don’t want to do anything, you’ll say so, right?”

“Probably,” he agreed. They were standing in the middle of the gym surrounded by nothing. “What are we doing, exactly?”

“You wanna learn how to shoot a bow?”

“I’d love to learn how to shoot a bow.”

“Great, but I also wanna teach you something else that you probably don’t wanna deal with right now. So, you give what I wanna teach you a shot, and I’ll teach you how to shoot a bow better than I can. Deal?”

He was nervous in an oddly excited way. “What is it?”

“Your spidey sense keeps failing you,” Clint said, and the excited energy immediately left Peter’s system. “I think you’re putting too much faith into while also not putting enough. You don’t follow because you look scared and confused. Let me try again. You trust your Spidey sense. If it tells you that you should duck, you duck. But you’re also rational, so you want to trust your actual senses, too. Rich kept showing up, and you didn’t realize it. Your sense gave you a little heads-up, just enough to make you uncomfortable, but you didn’t see anything, so you thought nothing of it. That’s you not putting enough trust. You putting too much trust into it is you not worrying about a danger because your sense didn’t scream at you. If it doesn’t go off, you think you’re okay. You’re simultaneously putting too much faith into your Spidey sense and putting not enough.”

“Okay, I get what you’re saying, but I don’t know what we can do about that,” Peter said. “We can’t just…make my Spidey sense more powerful.”

“You don’t get it,” Clint argued, “because if you got it, you wouldn’t be thinking about how to make your Spidey sense more powerful. It’s doing its job. What we gotta do is help you develop more faith in it.”

“But I trust my sense. You just said that. If it says duck, I duck. It tells me what to do and I do it, and it’s always the right move.”

“But you’re too rational to just put all of your trust into something that goes against what you see and what you hear. Remember how we told you we watched all of the footage before to figure out who hurt you? We watched as your sense went off, but you couldn’t see anything that suggested it should have, so you didn’t take your sense into account. It gave you a heads up that someone was _following_ you, but you didn’t see anybody, so you just wrote it off as being distracted.”

Peter was kind of getting frustrated with this conversation. More than kind of, actually. He was pretty frustrated with this conversation.

“You look mad. I’m sorry. Let me just get right to it. If I turned the lights out right now and tried to punch you, would you be able to dodge it?”

Was that a left turn? It felt like a left turn, but it also felt related. “Probably,” he admitted. “It doesn’t usually go off around you guys.”

“Is that true?” Clint challenged. “There’s times I’ve walked into a room without making any noise and you turn around anyways.”

“Well, yeah, usually I could just, I dunno, tell if someone is near.”

“Isn’t that your spider sense?”

Was it? It probably had to be, but it was hard to consider that his spidey warning sense because it was less of a warning and more of a, ‘hey, turn around real quick.’ “Maybe.”

Clint pulled a pair of goggles out of his pocket. “Friday, turn off the lights.”

Oh. So, his question wasn’t exactly rhetorical. Clint was really gonna try to fight Peter in the dark, but Clint was going to be wearing night vision goggles. “Dude, are you serious?” He hadn’t been out as Spider-Man, he hadn’t worked out, and he was still feeling a little run down after everything that had happened. His wrist was healed and there was no bruising, no swelling, no nausea, no anything, but he still felt just a little off and it was keeping him from being one hundred percent.

“So serious,” Clint confirmed. “Get ready because that’s the only heads up you’re getting. Block me, swing at me. Protect and defend yourself.”

Clint punched him _square_ in the face the first hit. It wasn’t a hard hit or anything, but it brought him stumbling backwards trying to recover without falling. “Clint!” Another hit, this time right in the center of his chest. “Barton, that hurts!”

“Then block me,” Clint said, sounding perfectly fine with taking Peter’s angry words. “Don’t let me hit you next time.”

How could he block a hit he couldn’t see from someone he knew wasn’t there to kill him? He took another hit, this time a little softer but still a face hit. Clint was definitely egging him on, trying to irritate him enough to try to hit back, and it admittedly working. He threw a punch in the direction Clint should have been, but he hit nothing but air. In return, he felt a shove from behind that almost made him go face first into the floor. “Dude, I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Punch me back!”

Peter closed his eyes in frustration and anger but took a second to try and calm himself down. He was getting mad at Clint, but he shouldn’t be. Clint was trying to help him out. Teach him a lesson. Help him with his spider sense. As he was trying to relax himself, he felt like there was something coming at his head, so he put his hand up and caught Clint’s fist. “Oh, shit,” he said, not really expecting to have blocked a hit. His wonder only lasted for a fleeting moment because he forgot that Clint had two hands. The second hit _did_ knock him down. “Hey, asshole, take it easy.”

“Don’t you think I am?”

Surprising himself again, he rolled away from Clint’s attack and back onto his feet. Another punch came for his face, which he dodged and sent out a hit of his own. His hit connected, and he kept swinging. They were now properly sparring in the dark. He took many hits, but he dodged many more. He wasn’t thinking about it anymore, instead just doing exactly what Clint must have been trying to get him to do; trusting in his sense _properly_. His eyes weren’t even opened.

Being physical again felt really, really good. Being able to be physical with his eyes closed and finally understand what his sense was there for felt, somehow, even better. It was tiresome, though, and he couldn’t go on forever. “Time,” he said, after Clint gave him another good hit that he couldn’t dodge. He sat down heavily on the floor, needing the biggest breather of his life after that workout. He was too sweaty. “Lights, please, Fri.”

Clint squatted on the ground in front of Peter. “You okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, close to gasping for air. Despite how painful it was, how hard it was to breathe, and how heavy his body now was, he had a blast. “I’m tapped out.”

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Peter shook his head, wiping off his sweaty forehead with his equally sweaty arm. “I haven’t done anything like that in months, I think. I’m out of shape.”

“You’re in permanently good shape.”

Abs for days. Enough said. “Still. I’m not in, uh, prime sparring condition.”

“I thought you were all healed up?”

“I am. There’s just…something. I don’t know. I’m still easy to tire. I’m healed, I’m healthy, I’m just still in the ‘rest’ phase of recovery. I’m okay, though. I needed that.”

Clint stared at him for a long moment and then cringed. “Tony is gonna kill me. You’re a little bruised up. I’m sorry. I thought you’d be more back to normal, but you’re bruising _quick_. I pushed too hard.”

“Nope. Nope, nope, not true. I feel great. That was incredible. It was like I was able to see you even though I couldn’t see anything. It was like there was a shape my mind was able to create that helped me figure out where you were. I am amazed. I had _that_ available to me this whole time? That’s just as useful as it telling me to duck when I need to duck. Why haven’t I been able to just do that this whole time?”

“I know Friday didn’t just tell me that Barton is beating up my kid.”

Tony’s voice came as a surprise, and both Peter and Clint looked around the room trying to see him before they realized it was from the ceiling. “I feel like Friday is maybe exaggerating because I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Peter said. “I don’t even know who Barton is.”

“I need some sort of explanation.”

“We were sparring,” Clint admitted. “He just came at me. Parker is out of control. I think you need to have a talk with him.”

“He turned out the lights and came at me!” A long, heavy, drawn-out sigh came from Tony before the call disconnected and Peter laughed before finding the strength to stand back up. “Your turn.”

“The hell you mean ‘my turn’?”

“Show me how to shoot. I mean, I know, in theory, how to shoot, but, you know.”

And Clint did, in thorough detail. He showed him the proper way to hold the bow, to load an arrow, to _hold_ an arrow. He helped him aim because aiming a bow was a little differently than aiming his webs. “Your webs are an extension to you, right?” Clint had asked, and Peter agreed. “My bow is an extension of me. If you handle a bow correctly, it should be an extension of you, too.” All Peter wanted to do was hit a bullseye. That’s pretty much all he thought about as he lined up his shot. Which meant that he missed the target completely, shooting a little too high and hitting the wall behind it. “You wanna know how I knew that was gonna happen?”

“Because I’m an amateur who needs you to take it easy on me because of that fact?”

A hearty laugh from Clint made Peter chuckle at himself. “Because I could _hear_ you begging the arrow to hit that irrelevant circle in the middle of that target. This isn’t you trying to brush up on your shooting skills; this is you trying to develop it. There’s no way you’d hit the bullseye first try. It was beyond naïve to even think you could do it. You should have been trying to just hit the target because that was an obtainable goal. You want a goal that is going to take a lot to achieve yet something you can no doubt achieve. Hit the target. That’s your goal. Why do you want to shoot?”

“Aside from it being cool, it’s, you know, training. Never know when Spider-Man is gonna need to hit a target.”

“It’s training,” Clint confirmed. It was obviously the answer he had been looking for. “When you first developed your webs, did you master your swinging ability first-try?”

That was not a good memory. It was a bad memory. Terrible. Awful. Horrible. The worst. “I swung into the side of a building face first.”

At least Clint tried to hold in a laugh, though he failed. “My point exactly. It took training, it took patience, it took practice. Shoot again. Don’t even look at the bullseye. Look at that target and see only one color. Paint it…who cares, paint it green in your mind. Try to hit the green.”

He still didn’t hit bullseye, but he did hit the target, and, okay, yeah, he cheered. He cheered himself. It was exciting, in his defense. Never in his life was he that determined to perfect shooting a bow like Clint did. There was no way he wasn’t going to practice shooting for hours every single day of the rest of his life. Imagine Spider-Man rocking a red bow with blue arrows. Imagine Spider-Man’s bow string being his own web.

Inspired.

“You’re a good teacher,” Peter said after they had finished up with their training session. He had managed to get close to a bullseye thanks to Clint’s constant advice. “Thank you for pushing me.”

Peter had been able to avoid Tony until the next day, though he was only kind of avoiding him. He was hoping that the bruising would fade by the time he saw Tony again, and thankfully, they did. Tony had actually been the one to find Peter. He had knocked on Peter’s door sometime before lunch. Tony came in, looked at Peter sitting at his desk doing a nerdy thing (studying), and nodded to himself. “You’re not black and blue,” he noted. “I was kind of expecting that.”

“My healing is still a little laggy,” he admitted, “but it gets the job done.”

“I talked to Legolas. You’re still not feeling too hot?”

“I don’t know if he twisted my words or if you’re twisting his words.” Tony just raised his eyebrows and said nothing. “I’m feeling fine. Just not ‘Lemme swing across the entirety of New York City’ fine. I couldn’t spar with Clint as long as I probably would have been able to before.”

“Should we go talk to Bruce about that? You haven’t had a check-up in over a week.”

“Calling it a ‘check-up’ makes me sound seven years old. If you’d feel better, I can talk to Bruce, but honestly, I wasn’t the most active person even before everything that happened. I’ll get back up to speed.”

“Fever? Nausea?”

The urge to roll his eyes was almost too strong to ignore, but he managed to stare straight ahead without any attitude-filled eye movement. “None of that, I promise. I’m going back to the gym later.”

“So soon after going yesterday? You don’t want to burn yourself out.”

Tony was the most overprotective person that could ever have existed. “When you were talking to Clint, either misunderstanding his words or hearing his misunderstanding of my words about how I feel, did he mention how I’m the one who called off sparring? I didn’t go any longer than I could handle. I’m not in the biggest hurry to feel how I did before when I was too tired to move. I just want to build my strength back up again.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re smart enough not to push yourself. Just take it easy, please?”

All Tony was doing was looking out for him. “I’ll be careful, dad,” Peter said, finally shutting his laptop to close out the distractions. “Do _you_ need me to stay away from the gym and sparring and everything like that? I could if that’d make you feel better.”

“I’m helicoptering again.” Tony chuckled a little in a not exactly amused way.

“You are,” Peter agreed, “but I can’t blame you for that. It’ll get annoying if in, like, eight months you’re still hesitant, but things kind of fell apart, so you’re totally justified. If it means anything, though, it was useful sparring. It wasn’t just us fighting.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Clint made a good point about how I use my spidey sense. He said I trust it too much and don’t trust it enough, which sounds stupid, but it does kind of make sense. If it tells me to jump, I jump, but I also rely on my senses too much.”

“People tend to rely on what they can see or hear, so that sounds normal to me.”

Could he bring up the kidnapping? Clint did and Peter didn’t freak out, so Peter could without Tony freaking out. Maybe. “Rich tricked me by not showing himself. Apparently, you guys saw that I got a little uncomfortable whenever he was nearby, and we know that was my sense, but we also know that I didn’t see him, and I trusted that more than I trusted the minor anxiety I got. I didn’t see him, I didn’t hear him, and Karen hadn’t known he was there. So, I moved on. I have heightened senses, but what if I’m using them too much? Like a crutch?”

Slowly nodding turned to slowly shaking his head. So no, Tony didn’t really get what he was saying.

“We turned the lights out and sparred in the dark.”

“You were serious when you said that?!”

“Well, Clint had night vision goggles.” There was silence, but Tony’s response should have just been, ‘bruh.’ It would have been fitting. “He was trying to get me to go with my sense even though I couldn’t see anything going on around me. I could dodge a hit from behind me with my sense anytime, but I was able to _feel_ where Clint was in the room. It was like I had a picture in my mind. He was swinging at me, and I was able to dodge them _and_ hit him back even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I think I’m getting a hang of my sense. On a different note, I’m learning how to shoot a bow.”

“He mentioned he was teaching you. Said you’re a natural.”

“That’s an exaggeration, but I don’t think I’m terrible. I can’t wait to be Spider-Hawk.”

“ _Please_ never call yourself Spider-Hawk.”

“I didn’t even give myself the name Spider-Man. If the people want to call me Spider-Hawk, they’ll call me Spider-Hawk. They called _you_ Iron Man even though your suit isn’t made of Iron.”

“You’re really doing okay, though?”

Peter let out an exasperated laugh. “I’m _fine_ , okay? I’ve rested for weeks, I had a good couple of days with Ned and MJ, I’m all caught up on my schoolwork, and Clint helped me remind myself how good it feels to actually move and do something. I’m fine.”

The tension in Tony’s shoulders, for the first time in a while, fell away, and Tony smiled. “Good.”

School was the next day which was a little nerve wracking. Very nerve wracking. He was terrified. Not in a panic attack inducing way, exactly. It was just fear, like a normal amount of fear, so, he wasn’t actually fairing all that horribly. Everybody stared at him when he walked into the school. Nobody said anything to him. Not yet, at least. He made it to his locker, met up with Ned and MJ, and tried to pretend that everything was normal. That nothing was out of the ordinary. If he pretended, his friends would pretend, the teachers would pretend, and then everybody else would pretend.

He was just the adopted son of Tony Stark whose kidnapping was broadcasted to the entire world. Nothing out of the ordinary.

People didn’t follow suit with his ‘act natural’ approach. Unfortunately, that was expected. He had students coming up to him that he had never talked to before. What surprised him was that it was _only_ people he never really talked to. He didn’t even know most of the names of the students who came up to him. Nobody he saw daily tried. “Was all of that real?” “Where is he now?” “Were you dying?”

“If you guys do not back up right now…” MJ started off her threat and then didn’t finish it. That made for the perfect threat. There were an endless amount of possibilities that would fit the threatening statement, all just as threatening as the last. She could be scary when she wanted to be. She reminded Peter of Pepper that way. Both were super kind and looked very safe, like there was nothing dangerous about them.

“Everybody is more interested in the fact that I almost died than the fact that I was adopted by Iron Man,” Peter said. “Most people didn’t say a word to me.”

“This was a little more public,” Ned said. “The adoption was hidden for, what, a year? The kidnapping lasted, like, twelve seconds, and Tony is the one who called to talk about it on the same day the adoption got out. Neither of you had any control of this, and, I don’t know, it screams ‘drama movie.’”

“You’re saying my life is like a drama movie?”

“Your life is one hundred percent a drama movie,” MJ agreed.

“That makes me feel _so_ much better about everything, guys, thanks.”

“Hey. The good guys always win in movies, don’t they?”

Ned had a point. He couldn’t argue with that. It did make it a little easier to handle the jerks of the day who couldn’t mind their own business. If everybody thought his crazy life was starting to resemble a crazy action-drama movie, joke is on them because he’s been thinking that for years. He’s watched the protagonist go through the few ups and the many downs and _still_ come out the other end alive. He had a head start on watching this never-ending fast-paced moving picture. The others still had to catch up.

His teachers were only a little bit surprised when he handed in all of his missed assignments. It was a lot of work so there should have been some shock, but he was also a nerd, so it wasn’t all-that surprising that he had finished. He was welcomed back with a simple, ‘nice to see you, Peter’ and that was that from his teachers. Publicly, at least. Twice he was asked to stay after class just so they could ask him how he was doing when there was nobody else around. Not in a nosey way, thankfully. It was them being good adults. They didn’t ask him any questions that didn’t center around if he was feeling okay being back at school.

It was nearing the final bell when his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He ignored it because he was strong enough to not panic over his phone buzzing. When it started buzzing again with a second phone call, he pulled his phone out and checked it under the table. It was Tony. He was kind of scared now. The vibrating stopped before a text popped up.

 **Tony:** Reporters are waiting for you. I’m outside and watched them pull up. You’ll be okay. Call me before you come outside

“Can I be excused?” Peter asked, raising his hand without waited to be called on. He was newly annoyed, so he wasn’t in the mood to be the timid student. “The news people are outside right now waiting to tear me apart and I need to call…” His dad? Tony? Mr. Stark? Why did things have to be so complicated where he didn’t know how to refer to him in public? “Well, I need to call whoever is picking me up today.”

Cue the entire class rushing to the windows to look outside into the parking lot. “Parker’s right; there’s a bunch of camera crews setting up outside,” someone said. “Dude, that’s more than _ever before_.”

“Thanks,” Peter said dryly.

The teacher did excuse him. He called Tony as he was walking to his locker. “I’m sorry these things keep happening, kid. Tell me how you want this handled.”

“They’ll swarm if you come in. They’ll swarm if I go down alone.”

“If they’re gonna swarm no matter what, then might as well make it so you aren’t alone.”

“Someone from class said there’s more outside than there usually is. Is that true?”

“Remember how bad it was when the news of the adoption got out?” Tony asked, almost rhetorically.

“That’s hard to forget.”

“There’s about double the amount of people. We got all the major news outlets, all the minor news outlets, and a good portion of paparazzi on top of all the crazy people who just want to see one of us. I mean, it is reporter galore out here.”

“That makes me feel better.” He was at his locker now and accidentally slammed it opened so it bounced off of his neighboring locker. “Shit. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, I know I can _probably_ swear around you without you caring, but I try not to, but I almost dented a locker with my locker.”

“Calm yourself. You don’t want to panic in front of everybody.”

“I’m not panicking. I’m _angry_. I can’t get a break. I’m doing okay. Today has actually been a pretty normal day, you know? I went to school and things were okay and that’s just it. Why can’t that just be it?”

“How long until you’re dismissed?”

Peter pulled his phone away from his ear and checked the time, sighing internally. “Any second now. Can you come up to the doors?”

“Way ahead of you. Pardon me, excuse me. Hi, I’m just Tony Stark, trying to push my way through rude a-holes to get to my kid. You know who I’m talking about? That kid you guys are trying to harass? Yeah, part like the red sea. Pretend I’m Moses.”

The eyeroll Peter managed was mostly done from an amused exasperation. Tony was such a strange personality. He was talking to the paparazzi like that with no fear despite the fact that they were definitely going to twist his works to make him look like he was doing more than try to stand up for his kid. Tony just didn’t care. He was above the press. He was Peter’s inspiration.

Peter shut his locker and jogged to the front of the school, getting there in time for the bell to ring. He saw Tony coming up, so he hung the phone up and walked outside to meet him. He wanted to hug Tony but stopped short of that, instead wrapping his arms around himself protectively. The reporters were already going crazy, snapping pictures of the two of them and shouting questions even though the microphones were too far away. “Desperate for a good story, huh? They probably haven’t had anything exciting to report on since the day we found you.”

“They’re annoying is what they are. I don’t want to be touched.”

“I can’t promise you won’t get bumped along the way, kid, but I’ll do my best. Let’s go.”

There was some self-control being practiced because what Peter wanted to do was grab the back of Tony’s jacket but what he actually did was keep his head down with his arms holding onto his own elbows. Questions were being thrown his way with no remorse. It got out of hand when his sense went off and someone grabbed his upper arm to turn him around while throwing a microphone in his face, expecting him to just answer any question they asked because they resorted to _touching him_ which just felt illegal.

Tony was probably going to solve the problem and come to his rescue, but Peter was mad, and he did not want to be touched, yet there he was. He grabbed the arm of the person who grabbed him and twisted their wrist to make them drop the microphone. It was a woman, he knew, because he heard her cry out. It probably wasn’t in pain because he wasn’t being rough, but it was most likely out of shock. Someone else reached for him, probably coming to defense of the reporter he was defending himself against, and he dodged their hand, instead flipping them over his shoulder. He helped them land as gently as he could onto their back before he grabbed the microphone off the ground and held it to his lips. “I am _sixteen years old_ and you just physically assaulted me on camera in the presence of _Iron Man_. If you’re _that_ hungry for views because nobody is watching or reading your news, then maybe that’s a sign that you’re in the wrong profession. Touch me again and we’ll be pressing charges.” The mic drop moment kind of made him feel like the baddest person on the planet.

The second the microphone left his hands, Tony had grabbed him and pulled him along to the car. They were still being chased by reporters, unsurprisingly. Tony pushed him into the passenger seat and shut the door before turning around to address the reporters. “The first thing they teach you is to keep your hands to yourself. If you’re trying to interview someone, it’s shitty to throw a microphone in their direction and push a camera in their face, but we all know that’s fair game. What _isn’t_ fair game is grabbing hold of anybody to make them pay attention to you. Every single person out there saw what happened to him not even a month ago. Did none of you think that maybe he wouldn’t want to be grabbed at on his way home from his first day back at school? To the pair of you who touched my kid, might as well go back to your offices and pack up because I guarantee you that you’re going to be fired within the hour. Don’t show back up tomorrow or else I will consider it harassment. Restraining orders will come next. I’ve been kind enough to not hit any of you guys with stalking claims, but I recognize two dozen of you who have waited outside of his school before. _I_ am a public figure. _Peter_ is a private, underaged citizen. Learn the difference.”

When Tony got in the car, he sped away without really trying to avoid anybody in his way. They all scurried and Tony’s tired squealed. They left in a hurry. “I’m okay,” Peter said before Tony could ask. “I’m sorry if I just created a problem for you to clean up. I’m not sorry for my reaction.”

“For Pepper to clean up,” Tony corrected, “and don’t worry about it. It’s time to change some laws in the country when it comes to privacy of the underaged children of celebrities. We’ll use this as an example. You might have just made it easier, so thank you for that.”

“I didn’t even mean to grab them,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to be touched, and then I was touched, and I just, I remembered what Bucky said before.”

“And what did Bucky say before?”

“Back when the news got out about the adoption, he told me that I could, you know, fight back. I was adopted by a superhero who lives in the public eye so it would make sense that I know some self-defense. So, I was grabbed, and I was like, I don’t want that, so I reacted, you know, without really hurting anyone.”

“It was very sloppy, so you don’t gotta worry about giving yourself away as a superhero yourself.”

“Is now really the time to criticize my abilities? That’s heartless. I’m going through a stressful time. You could at least show some sympathy.”

“You could learn the proper technique for an _Ippon Seoi Nage_.”

“What in the world did you just say to me?”

“A shoulder throw; it’s the, you know, Judo name for it. See what I mean? You don’t even know what it was called. How could you ever execute it properly?”

Peter was now laughing. “Shut up. For the love of god, stop talking. You’re supposed to be trying to make sure I’m okay and you’re here giving me bad Judo lessons. What kind of father are you anyways?”

“The proud kind who just watched his kid stand up for himself on camera without apology or remorse.” A serious answer, ending the joking moment, but it made Peter smile all the same.

There was a collection of people waiting for them once they got off of the elevator at the Tower. Steve, Bucky, Natasha, and Sam all stood up when they walked in, all wearing worried looks. If Peter hadn’t been surrounded by as much death as he had been, he would have jokingly asked them who died, but he held back. “What’s up, guys?” he asked instead, not catching on to the fact that they probably knew exactly what happened as he was leaving school.

“They’re reporting about you attacking a reporter,” Sam explained. “We know that’s not true, so we were waiting to ask you what happened and see if you are okay.”

“I’m fine, and yeah, that kinda happened.”

“He didn’t ‘attack a reporter.’ He defended himself from an amateur who reached out to grab him. Big difference.”

“Are there any stations out there showing everything that happened, Friday?” Peter asked.

“There’s no video of the entire encounter. However, there are written reports that clearly say that you were defending yourself.”

“They really like taking things out of context,” Peter acknowledged.

“Someone grabbed him, so he twisted her wrist so she let go of him, and then somebody else grabbed him from behind, so Pete flipped him over his shoulder before having a mic drop moment.”

“A mic drop moment?” Natasha asked, eyebrow raised.

“He basically threatened to press charges and told them that they should find new jobs.”

“I said that if they were willing to grab a kid in the presence of Iron Man because they needed the views, then maybe they weren’t in the right career path. Then he went on and said that the people who grabbed me would be fired within the hour.”

“And they will be.”

“He was calling people in the car and kind of threatening them.”

“I was protecting my kid, not threatening people.”

“He was threatening them. He said that if those people aren’t fired then he would set the public on them because the public seems to like me, or at least hate anybody underaged getting this kind of negative attention.”

Peter excused himself after that, heading to his bedroom to change his clothes and ditch his bookbag. Also kind of calm down. He wasn’t anxious, really, and he wasn’t all that angry anymore, but there was a lot of energy flowing through him, so he was gonna have to take a seat for a moment. He was about to shut the door when he heard, “Kid.” It was Bucky, so Peter opened his door fully and looked back at him. “Are you okay? That’s a lot of excitement your first day away from home.”

“I’m okay. I don’t love what happened, but I’m not, like, not okay because of it. It just happened.”

“Some grey.”

He was confused at first, but then realized what he was getting at. Everything was always black or white because he didn’t like grey. Grey felt like a bigger let down than black. Grey felt okay then, though. “Yeah, I guess I do have room for grey in my life.” Bucky smiled at him, nodded, and then walked away.

Because there was still some adrenaline in his system, he did a handstand and then fell backwards so he landed on his bed. Moving felt good. He grabbed his phone and decided to get his anger get out the way now rather than later. He was, without a doubt, going to get himself worked up by going on Twitter, googling the situation, and seeing what everybody was saying, but if he didn’t look now, he was going to hear about it at school, and that was going to make him even more angry. He was stupid. He went to his room in order to get chilled out a little bit from all the energy, but now he was willingly getting himself annoyed. His logic was spot on.

**Midtown Student Attacks News Reporters Live on Camera**

**Son of Tony Stark Leads Ruthless Attack on Innocent Reporters**

**Peter Parker Properly Loses His Mind**

“What the f-”

His outburst was interrupted by his phone buzzing in his hands. It was Ned, so he accepted the video chat request. “Dude, what the hell happened after school? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, dude. People are taking things out of context.”

“ _Did_ you attack a reporter?”

“I, the son of Tony Stark, lead a ruthless attack on innocent reporters,” he said, using one of the article titles he just ran across. “One of the idiot reporters were trying to get me to answer questions and grabbed me, so I _defended_ myself. Conveniently, there’s no footage being released of them grabbing me first. Whatever.”

“The news was one when me and my parents got home, and they’re mad for you, dude. We just watched the video.”

“And what does it look like?”

“It looks like you decided to just freak out on some innocent reporter. Did they hurt you?”

“Nah, man, they just irritated me. I gotta go. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

There was some sneaking involved when he went down to the gym. If Tony knew he was going to the gym, he’d probably be worried because Tony liked to worry. He’d probably want to talk to Peter about what happened a little bit more and reinforce what Peter already knew; that he didn’t do anything wrong and the news sucked. He wanted to move, do things. Practice. Maybe get some frustration out while he as at it. He grabbed some targets and crawled along the walls and the ceiling to place them in various places throughout the room. He almost decided to grab a bow, but decided he’d be better off practicing something he could improve on alone. So, he brought his shooters. Things were going to get exciting.

When Friday turned the lights off, he was filled with a renewed rush of adrenaline. Practicing in the dark was his new favorite activity. He spun himself around like a child, trying to disorientate himself, and then he tried to focus. It was harder to do considering the fact that they weren’t moving or attacking him, but there was something that helped him see, kind of. He couldn’t see with his eyes. It was dark and he closed his eyes for good measure. It was also quiet in the room, and the targets were inanimate, non-noise making objects, so he couldn’t hear much. Yet somehow, maybe it was just intuition, he could feel where things were. Six targets were hanging up around the room. Six shots from his webs. He didn’t have to turn the lights on to know he got six bullseyes.

He was so excited.

Going with the lights out approach, Peter went to work on the punching bag. The lights didn’t affect that at all, but he was still appreciative of his interpretations of his surroundings when he couldn’t see.

Did he want to return as Spider-Man? Sometimes he put a little bit of thought into it because he did love going out and saving people. Genuinely loved it. He had fun, too. Other times, he put no thought into it. Why would he want to go back out? He was in enough danger when he wasn’t in the suit. Why add the unnecessary risk? Rich went after him because he was Spider-Man, except this last time he was taken as Peter and not as Spider-Man. Spider-Man brought that danger to him. Spider-Man had to see people hurt or killed whereas Peter _didn’t_ yet he somehow managed to see bad things without the suit and without the mask.

Nothing, though, could match the adrenaline rush he got when he was out, falling from the tallest buildings in the city, knowing that he wasn’t going to hit the ground because his webs never failed him. Swinging low to the ground and waving to the pedestrians or sticking to the sides of buildings high in the sky; it was some of the greatest feelings in the world.

He hadn’t really put a lot of his life into being Spider-Man since before May died. When she did, he finally learned the boundaries she had been trying to teach him. Tony helped with that, too. He didn’t help more than May did, but after losing her, he was reminded of the mortality everybody had. He wanted to spend more time as him and not as this masked vigilante, but he still set aside time to swing every single day. It had been a decent amount of time since Peter had a set schedule, where he knew he was going out at a certain time each day, but he also made sure he was not outside more than he was inside. Now, he was only inside.

Was this why he hadn’t been as happy as he could have been? He had problems when he was going out as Spider-Man every day, but he had more problems when he wasn’t. Before, he could go out as Spider-Man a few times a week, but still stay inside some days, and that was around the time his life really started going downhill. That was biased, though, wasn’t it? He had ups and downs at all times. Lately, the downs had been stronger than the ups, and most of it didn’t have to do with the fact that he wasn’t going out every single day as Spider-Man. Coincidence, then? But he didn’t believe in coincidences.

It took someone opening the door for him to realize he was punching the bag in frustration more than he was punching it for practice. The lights automatically turned back on and he turned, almost in defense, to see who it was. It was Rhodey. “‘Sup?” he greeted, wiping some sweat away from his face.

“Practicing with the lights out?”

“Mind your business. Don’t question me about my gym habits. I don’t question you about your gym habits. Wow, judgy much?”

“Kid, do you ever stop talking?” Rhodey asked with the same exasperation he talked to Tony with. Peter grinned. He had earned that exasperation. The Rhodey exasperation should had been everybody biggest aspirations in the world.

“I was trying to strengthen my spidey sense. What’s up?”

“I missed my morning workout before I came to visit, so I was gonna sneak one in before dinner.”

“Oh, you’re visiting? What for?”

Rhodey didn’t really stay in the Tower. Some of them came and went, but Rhodey especially. He had real responsibilities, so he was around sometimes, but he didn’t really live there like most of them. When he was in town for a few days, he stayed with them. He’d pop in which was fun, but ‘visits’ were usually for a purpose. When Peter was taken, Rhodey stayed at the Tower for a week; from the day he went missing to a few days after he was found. It was a visit.

“Mostly wanted to visit you. Heard you were doing better. That true?”

“Would he lie about me being better?”

“Point taken. Tony wouldn’t lie about that. How’s everything going?”

“Oh, I get it. The air force sent the person closest with Tony Stark to question his kid over losing control on innocent members of the general public.” He wasn’t being serious. He jumped up and grabbed the top of the punching bag, swinging himself around so he was sitting on top of it. “Whatcha gonna tell the air force?”

“I’ll tell them that you seem to be a danger to society. All that unwanted attention has gone to your head. You’re a lost cause definitely worthy of the attention of the military.” Ha. Rhodey had jokes. “Are you okay?”

“All good.”

“That why you’re punching yourself out in the dark?”

“I’m not punching myself out. I’m just punching. Hey, I was thinking, do you think my dad would set up a jungle gym in here? Think about how awesome that would be. There could be bars hanging around the ceiling for me to swing to like monkey bars. There could be an entire obstacle course in the air. That’d be sick.”

“I think he’d have an aneurism imagining you falling twenty feet from the ceiling.”

“The ceiling is forty feet, easy. But anyways, I wouldn’t fall, and if I did, forty feet wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Peter.”

“I’d obviously have my webs if I’m swinging around, so I’d catch myself if I fell, but I wouldn’t fall. It would be fun.”

“Get off the punching bag so I could work out while I listen to your bad ideas.”

Peter stood up and grabbed the chain holding up the punching bag. He climbed up it effortlessly and stuck his hands to the ceiling. Rhodey looked like he aged about twenty years by that. “Don’t give me that look. I’ve missed moving.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you want to put the suit back on.”

“I was thinking about that before you came in,” he admitted. He made his way over to the wall and then climbed back down to the floor as Rhodey started taping his hands up. “I don’t know what I want right now.” He wanted to be somewhere high in the air, so he climbed above some lockers where they stored some weapons and sat with a sigh. “Going back out would be fun. I miss moving and doing useful things. But things kinda suck because of the suit.”

“What don’t you like about the suit?”

“Well, obviously, the suit is amazing, but being Spider-Man is just…I don’t know. I’m a target as Spider-Man, and I see some things that are sad, and I’ve made a habit of separating me from Spider-Man which just confuses my brain, I guess. But I kind of really miss being Spider-Man. I don’t know. Whatcha been up to? I haven’t seen you in forever. You missed our Avengers Photoshoot.”

“You would have seen me a couple of weeks ago if you had been willing to accept visitors, and if the ‘Avengers Photoshoot’ hadn’t been as spontaneous as it had been, I would have been there. You also never texted me back.”

“I didn’t? When did you text me?”

“Didn’t I text you?”

“I don’t think you texted me. I was careful to text everybody back once I got my phone.”

“No, I texted you after that.”

“I would have texted you back if I saw your text. Did I leave you on read?”

“You know what, I don’t actually know. I planned on texting you.” Rhodey put an end to his punching and pulled his phone out of his pocket. A second later, he chuckled to himself. “I have a draft texted for you, but I never actually pressed send. My bad, bud.”

The pair of them were hanging out for about half an hour when Tony joined them in the gym. “I was told I might find you two here,” he said. “Kid, what _are_ you doing?”

At some point in their conversation, he went back to being on the ceiling, except now he was walking around. Rhodey was acting as if that was normal. “I’m walking?” he said with confusion because that would be funnier than anything else.

“I see that! On the ceiling!”

Was it the recent ordeal that made Tony react like that, or was it the hiatus from Spider-Man, or was it just Tony being a dad? “I’m sticky,” he said, “and I have webs to keep me from going splat.”

“You’re wearing your shooters? So, you weren’t sparring or anything like that?”

“I was punching the bag for a little bit. Why?”

“Good to know you’re not overworking yourself at all.”

Oh. Right. His shooters had sensors that were constantly monitoring him. Helicopter parent. “I was kinda going at it with the bags, so you probably should have been notified.”

“He was throwing stupid punches. You’d be disappointed. What are you teaching him anyways, Tone?”

“Nothing useful it seems.”

That wasn’t true, and even though it was obviously a joke, Peter had to fight himself to not come to Tony’s defense. Tony taught him so much; he taught him more than anybody probably expected. He taught Peter confidence. He showed him what it was like to actually be a hero, not just act like one. He helped Peter grow as a teenager, someone who should allow time to be mask-free. Tony inspired Peter in every possible way before they ever met, and now? All Peter really wanted out of life was to be as great a person as Tony was. Tony was someone who was a hero in the suit and, somehow, an even bigger hero outside of it. He encouraged Peter’s silliness rather than shut it down because some people seemed to think that a teenager couldn’t act so ‘childish’ as he sometimes did. He also encouraged Peter to take everything as a lesson on how to grow and mature.

Why were people so dedicated to hating Tony? No, not people, because the general public seemed to adore Tony after news of the adoption got out, but the press hated him. They were always looking for reasons to make him seem like the bad guy when he was so obviously one of the greatest guys there could be. On that, why were people trying to be as mean to Peter as they could be? He wasn’t the best person to have existed, but he didn’t go around doing bad things. He protected himself, and now people were making him sound like a delinquent who was destined to follow in Tony’s footsteps. Peter _wanted_ to follow in Tony’s footsteps, but he wasn’t a delinquent. And on top of that as well, why were people turning on Spider-Man just because Spider-Man was taking a break? The number of articles he read about Spider-Man’s betrayal of New York City was annoying. When Spider-Man was active, there were some news outlets that criticized his every move, yet the second he stayed off of the streets, those same reporters were publishing articles that said that the city was falling apart without Spider-Man, so Spider-Man had obviously let the city fall apart on purpose and it was all his fault. God forbid anybody blamed the criminals for the crime rather than blame the vigilante.

These are the thoughts Peter kept coming back to for the remainder of the day. He kept getting angry over how the news wouldn’t cut him, or Tony, or Spider-Man any slack, and then he kept feeling empowered over the fact that he new someone as good as Tony, and then he kept considering putting the suit back on and taking more control over his life once more.

Pepper came into his room that night as he was sitting upside-down on his ceiling scrolling through Twitter. She was carrying a cupcake. “You’re in the air,” she acknowledged.

“You’re on the floor,” he countered. He stuck his hands to the ceiling, turned right-side-up, and let go so he landed on his feet on his bed. “You also have a cupcake.”

“It’s for you. It’s a ‘sorry that happened to you today but I’m glad you’re okay’ cupcake. It’s red velvet. Surprise.”

Pepper was the sweetest person on the planet. “I love you so much,” he said, accepting the cupcake and taking a huge bite of it. With a mouth full, he said, “this is the best cupcake I’ve ever tasted, I think.”

“I hope you aren’t saying that because you think I made it. Rhodey came over with cupcakes. I found them, stole one, and brought it to you.”

“It’s the thought that makes it so good.”

“I haven’t had the chance to come check on you. I’ve had multiple sources tell me you’re perfectly okay, so I didn’t rush over. How’re you doing?”

“I’m okay. Was it a terrible mess to clean up?”

“I haven’t even bothered addressing the public,” she admitted. “There’s been a lot of talk going on between SI and news outlets all over the city. We made sure the two who grabbed you were fired. We’ve heard weak apologies that we didn’t accept on your behalf because they were way out of line. We’ve declined at least a dozen interviews, also on your behalf. We’ve also made it known to every important person we could reach today that we take your privacy _very_ seriously now. We even started talking to lawmakers about putting something in place to reassure us and other famous parents that our children will be granted more privacy. It’s been a busy day, but I’d say it’s been semi-successful. How was the remainder of your day?”

“I just had the best cupcake of my life, caught up with Rhodey a bit, and I’m learning how to see in the dark. It wasn’t a bad day, I don’t think.”

She kissed his forehead then, and he didn’t feel embarrassed by the fact that one of his favorite things to experience was a forehead kiss by Pepper even though he was a teenage boy. “Glad to hear it.”

School came again because, for some reason, someone decided that school should be five consecutive days a week. The fear he felt the day before wasn’t there. There was no nervousness or anxiety. He felt oddly ready to deal with whatever he may have to deal with, whether that be from other students or reporters who were going to brave a restraining order. It was Tuesday. Tuesdays had, historically, sucked. Most of the bad things that happened to him were on a Tuesday. He hated Tuesdays. Mondays weren’t the worst day of the week. Everybody forgot about Tuesday. Yet, despite his hatred for Tuesdays, he didn’t think this one would be a bad day.

After barely stepping foot into the building, he heard a yell from down the hallway. It was a loud and drawn out yell, and the closer it got, the more excited the yell sounded. Flash rounded a corner, proving to be the source of the yelling, and he ran _quick_ towards Peter. “Parker!” he shouted, raising his hand obviously for a high five. Peter lifted his hand into the air and Flash smacked it hard before wrapping an arm around his shoulders and jumping. “Yo, dude, what happened yesterday was _sick_. What a world we live in. Puny Parker showed up those reporters. Dude, you have to tell me how amazing it felt. I watched you yell at them and you _literally dropped the mic_. What did you say to them? I tried searching for the footage and found absolutely nothing.”

Flash was being super nice. Flash hadn’t been mean to Peter in a while, but this was a whole new level. The excitement was also new. “Uh, hey, Flash,” he said, kind of awkwardly. He still didn’t really know how to socialize with people casually, and now there was a crowd of people surrounding him eagerly. It was a different crowd than yesterday; they were almost as excited as Flash was. “I told them that, um, they weren’t that good at their jobs.”

“Oh, don’t act all modest now. You had a mic drop moment and it looked serious. What did you say?”

How many times was he going to have to relay what he said? And why wasn’t he annoyed by this? Why was he kind of excited? “I said if they touched me again that we’d press charges, and then I said that if they were that desperate for views that they were willing to grab Iron Man’s kid, then they had the wrong job.”

Flash erupted in yelling again, letting go of Peter and running around once again shouting, “Oh!” The crowd around them were yelling as well. It seemed his actions got Flash’s adrenaline going, too. “Parker, you’re so much cooler than I ever thought possible!”

Okay, why did Flash saying that actually cause him to feel some pride? The world was strange.

Sometimes, just sometimes…the world was strange enough that Peter kind of really wanted to be around to see it.

There was no thought behind the conversation Peter struck up with Tony during dinner. Well, there was some thought behind the subject matter, but he hadn’t even considered talking to Tony about it. “Out with it, Underoos,” Tony had said.

“What?”

“You’re getting antsy, so you wanna say something. What’s up?”

He didn’t have time to beat around the bush because he surprised himself with the words that came out of his mouth. Had he been aware of what he was asking, it would have taken twenty minutes to get past, “um, well, you see, uh…” and other useless mumbling. “I want to go back out as Spider-Man.”

Pepper, who had been quietly eating and ignoring the ‘Peter has something to say but he won’t say it’ behavior, set her fork down and folded her hands on top of the table. “Before Tony says no because I know he’s thinking it, why don’t you explain to us how ready you feel to put the suit back on.”

“I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I started moving again,” he admitted. “I’ve been thinking about if I want to be Spider-Man, and I wasn’t convinced I wanted it until, I don’t know, right now, I guess. The thought of not being Spider-Man makes me more sad than I thought it did.”

“You wanting to be Spider-Man again and you being ready for Spider-Man again are two different things,” Pepper said.

“Why are we even having this discussion?” Tony asked. “You might be ready to get back into more action than before, but training a little bit over the weekend doesn’t suddenly make you ready for Spider-Man, at least not physically, and mentally, I know I can only speak for what I think and what I’ve observed, but I’m not convinced you’re mentally prepared for it either. You’re still processing what’s happened and getting used to living in a life where what happened to you happened. You haven’t even agreed to start counseling yet.”

“I’m not saying I’m ready to go back out as Spider-Man tonight,” Peter said before Tony could continue. “I’m saying I want to get ready so I _can_. I miss going out. I want to start, I don’t know, preparing myself for it. Train more. I’ll start seeing my therapist again. I just want this to be something you’ll let me work towards rather than hold me back from it, and I know that’s going to be hard for you guys because if I were in your shoes, I’d hold me back, too, but maybe consider it.”

“We have been considering it,” Pepper said.

“We have?” Tony asked almost comically.

“Well, I have. I’ve thought about how I’d react if you told us you wanted to go back out again. It is a scary thought, but it’s also who you are. You are Peter Parker, and you are Spider-Man. You’ve set aside one part of who you are. It’d be unfair to keep you from it longer than you’re comfortable with.”

“Excuse me?” Part of Peter felt like Tony’s interjections were intentionally funny and another part felt like Tony was being one hundred percent genuine with his responses. Sometimes, it was hard to tell.

“I’ll even let you sit in and watch me train and practice,” Peter said to Tony.

“‘Let’ me?”

“Please think about it, dad? When me and Clint went to the gym the other night, it made me realize how something has been missing. _I’ve_ been missing from me. Spider-Man has been part of me for so long. I don’t remember the last time I even shot a web before or I climbed on something or used any of my, my, abilities, I guess, besides my healing. I’m just Peter, and yeah, I know you’ll say just Peter is perfectly fine, and I can kind of agree, but I’m not just Peter anymore and I haven’t been for years, just like how you’re not _just_ Tony Stark. You’re Iron Man, too.”

A staring contest. A long one that Peter was determined to win. He lifted his chin and kept eye contact with Tony who was also set on not blinking. Peter felt that if he lost the staring contest, he’d lose this conversation and Tony would say no altogether. After a literal eternity (aka maybe two minutes _at most_ ), Tony sighed and looked down at the table. “You really want to go back out?”

“I really do.”

“Then you got my support.”


End file.
